


Weapons, Whisky, Hackers and Steak (Or 3 things Eliot and Shaw like, and one they pretend not to)

by bruisespristine



Category: Leverage, Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Brotp, Mission Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-04-28 07:17:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5082727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bruisespristine/pseuds/bruisespristine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot and Shaw are made to be bros. This will be a series of one shots (each chapter = one encounter) starring Eliot and Shaw, starting preseries for both. Each chapter stands alone if you're into that sort of thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Weapons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Racethewind_10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Racethewind_10/gifts).



_Circa 2008_

Shaw smirks like a shark as the jagged glass left in the window frame digs into her stomach, while she makes quick work of wriggling through the small gap. She slides down the inside wall, cushioning the drop with her hands and rolling expertly to her feet, double checking the room for any signs of life. The only sound is the whirring of an air conditioning unit, and she double taps her comm to let Cole know she’s in before padding toward the closed door. 

The sublevel corridor is empty, just as it should be, and Shaw flicks the safety off her gun as she creeps up the staircase with confident steps. The mark will be sitting in his EZ chair, watching the baseball, as he always is on a Sunday night. Shaw will put two silenced in his heart, one in his head, and be on her merry way. 

She drips WD40 from her small tube onto the hinges and eases the door at the top of the stairs open. Two strides take her around the doorframe to the living room, and she fires at the figure slumped in the chair just as Cole pipes up in her ear. 

“Shaw! Someone else is in there.” 

She’s moving before he finishes speaking, but it’s too late, expert hands slide up her arm and twist, forcing her to drop her gun and then impossibly fast the cold slide of steel is at her throat. She calculates.

Her movement is explosive, head connecting with her attacker’s nose with a sickening crunch at the same time the blade he’s carrying slices deep into the meat of her left hand, as she wedges it between the knife and her throat. It was her only possible move, but the blood spills hot and acidic down her forearm as she twists.

Ever practical, she throws her arm out, the pumping blood spraying out into the man’s face, momentarily blinding him and he slides away from her, down the corridor. 

He has long hair. On the short and stocky side. Fiercely efficient. Her throat is bleeding a little, but not badly. It shouldn't be bleeding at all. She looks down and grimaces; her hand is totally out of commission. 

She retreats carefully, grabbing an abandoned tshirt from the floor and making a fist around it, tying her hand into fighting shape in case they end up hand to hand, and restricting the bloodloss. Cole chatters in her ear, but she ignores him, every fibre of her being taunt and reckless with adrenaline. 

The body in the chair is not a body, she realises with a glance. Heaped pillows in the vague shape of an overweight man. So whoever her assailant is got the guy out? 

A whisper of sound alerts her and she twists through the air, a feral grin tugging at her mouth. She slides her backup piece out of her pants and breathes silently, counting. 

“You’re here to kill him.” The voice is laced with a Southern twang, and her brain spits up some information, making her blink in surprise.

“And you’re Eliot Spencer.” It has to be. Cowboy twang, long hair, the lack of a bullet in her back, choosing to slit her throat instead. Well, trying and failing. 

The voice comes from a different place, he’s on the move. She readjusts her position. “You’re ISA... I'm gonna guess you’re Shaw. Saw your handiwork in Bucharest. Very impressive.” There’s a grin in his voice and Shaw matches it, enjoying herself. Blood drops from her makeshift bandage onto the floor. 

“Thanks. What are you here for?” She has about twenty minutes to get proper medical attention, or find some ducttape.

She pads left, down the room, hovering between the kitchen and the living area with her back against the wall. He’s on the stairs, she thinks. “Ah, you know. This and that.” 

He’s at the top of the stairs, above her. She fires into the ceiling, pacing it out in her head without even consciously processing, waiting for the scream and thud of her perfect aim. She knows it like she knows to breathe, but only silence fills the room after the shot dies down.

Eliot Spencer chuckles, his voice distorted by the thin walls and ceilings. She can’t place him any more. Cursing internally she pads down the hall and takes the first few steps up the stairs. A soft noise behind her makes her turn, bullets already tearing through the air. She sees his stupid long hair bouncing as he clears the fence in the yard, her bullets shatter the front window but don't even come close to his running figure. 

He turns and waves under a streetlamp and then disappears into the darkness.

“What the hell, Cole?” She clears the house while Cole makes excuses, equipment malfunctioning, impossible entry. Blah, blah, blah.

The target is ducttaped to a radiator, gagged but still breathing. His face is ragged with fear and his white shirt ringed with sweat. There’s a smudge of red at the collar, and fat, black sharpied letters mar the breast. “Nice to meet you. ES.” 

Shaw shoots the target, cuts his tshirt off him and takes care of her hand with her field kit. Then she makes the whole place look like a home invasion before slipping out into the night. Eliot fucking Spencer. 

Cole drives the speed limit out of the small town, and Shaw gazes out the window, thinking. 

“What are you grinning about?” 

“Shut up, Cole.”


	2. Whisky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot finds Shaw in a bar, their bromance continues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: Mentions of self harm, mentions of death, some low level sexual content, mentions of kink

_Circa 2013_

The bar smells like old cigarettes and booze. Everything is sticky with unidentifiable residue. The decor is stained wood, motorcycle regalia and animal heads. Every single person in the place looks like they might have put down roots and become one with the room. It’s the perfect kind of dive to disappear in, if you perfect the face Shaw has, the one that tells the locals not to fucking bother, just keep the drinks coming. She’s four deep but the ache in her guts still feels like someone’s been at her with a melon baller. She can’t even tell if it’s the bullet wound or something worse, something deeper. 

The jukebox makes a loud clunking sound every time it switches tracks, and the glass she’s drinking out of has a chip that keeps catching on her lip. The blood tastes alright with the whisky, though, and the sharp flash of pain kind of feels good. Feels real, at least. Lately, Shaw’s been having an increasingly difficult time not digging her nails into her own skin, not biting through her own lip. Physical pain is quantifiable, recognisable. Welcome. If she didn’t have stitches in her guts she’d pick a fight, but even a redneck can get lucky and under the table medical care ain’t cheap. Better just to try and drown the squirm with liquor.

A movement catches Shaw’s eye, and she half turns on her squeaky maroon leather stool to give whoever has dared to encroach on her small corner of bar a death glare. 

“You look like you could use this,” a bottle clanks down on the bar in front of her, amber liquid glinting in the low light. The speaker is short, stocky, pings Shaw’s military radar like it hasn’t been pinged in a while out here in buttfuck nowhere, but none of that matters because tonight she’s only here to drink until she can’t see her glass to pour. Maybe when she’s numb enough she’ll find some nice young football player to bounce her off a few walls until she might actually get some sleep.

“Not interested,” she says flatly, and the stranger moves so he’s no longer silhouetted against the light. Shaw immediately recognises his face and snorts. “Eliot Spencer,” she keeps her voice low, moves her left hand an inch so she has a clear push off the edge of the bar if she needs it. She’ll have to roll, she’ll probably pop a few stitches but she’s quick enough, still. If he’s here to fight. If the ISA found out she didn’t die on the pavement like they intended, Eliot could have good reason to be here.

He doesn’t have aggression in his body right now, though and he’s watching her with a look that’s just far enough north of pity that she doesn’t try to punch it off his stupid, gentle face. 

Her stomach throbs dully around the two week old bullet wound reminding her not to start anything she won’t be able to finish, and Eliot’s soft blue eyes are enough like Cole’s that she has to look away. 

She grabs the bottle, though. No sense in wasting good whisky. 

He slides into the seat next to her, props his elbow on the bar and leans over to grab a glass before tilting it toward the bottle. She debates for a minute, but she hasn’t spoken to anyone beyond the strictly practical since she stole the ambulance and left Finch and his guard dog, Reese, in that graveyard. 

She pours.

They drink in silence for a while, he doesn’t push her, doesn’t ask about the injury he must know is beneath her black tank, or the empty look that she knows has been on her face since Cole died. 

He used to make her smile, sometimes, Cole did. Annoying, whiny little fuck though he might have been, he was a good partner, and now he’s dead. Suddenly company isn’t sounding so bad. It’s a distraction, at least. 

She flexes her left hand palm up on the bar, eyes the thick ridge of scar tissue Eliot’s knife left behind when he tried to slit her throat. Wonders what to say, if anything. 

“Healed okay?” Eliot swirls his whisky around in his glass, looks at the old amber wood under his bare arm instead of at her. He’s wearing some kind of plaid shirt that makes him look even more like a cowboy than his long hair alone. He makes Shaw feel like it doesn’t matter if she replies or not, in a good way. Like she could enforce the silence by not responding, and he wouldn’t mind. 

“Fourteen stitches and a pain in the ass for a month,” she smirks, injury talks are always fun.

“You creased me, you know?” He looks up and grins at her, all stubble and long hair and coiled energy behind sleepy eyes. 

Shaw narrows her eyes at him, “you didn’t even squeak.” She must have hit him through the floor, like she’d intended, like she’d been  _ sure  _ she had. “Ribs?” 

“Cracked one, left me with a nice scar.” He licks his lips. “Wanna see?” 

It takes her about a second and a half to decide yeah, she does want to see. He’s hot, dangerous, probably not here to kill her all things considered, and strong enough to hold her down and fuck her up, if he’s into that kind of thing.

No harm in asking. “I like it rough.” She makes sure to roll the words around in her mouth like whisky, letting them drip off her tongue slow and low. She watches his pupils expand.

“Good.” He almost growls it, and then they’re both sliding off their barstools and Shaw grabs her leather jacket with one hand while he grabs the whiskey. 

They don’t talk, kiss or touch in the cab, which stops at some nameless hotel. “This isn’t where I’m staying,” he says as he unlocks the door with a key from his pocket.

“I don’t care,” Shaw shoves him to make him hurry up, and then they’re through the door and he’s pressing her against it. 

She groans and arches, bites down on his lip and waits for him to pick her up and slam her into the wood, arches for him, but he breaks the kiss to pull his shirt off. 

It’s a good chest though, so she doesn’t complain, fumbles with his belt while trying to get a decent eyeful. He’s gratifyingly hard through his jeans and she palms him, leans her head back against the door to invite him into biting her throat but he doesn’t curl into her. 

She wants him to hurt her, to black the uncomfortable things that keep twisting her guts up since Cole died in her arms, and she growls, shoving him back towards the bed, climbing up his body. 

Straddling him is a good distraction, she grinds her hips down into him making him tense and groan as his strong arms come up to hold her close, so she grabs one of them and pulls it up to her throat, trying to force his fingers around it so she can choke herself out a bit. 

It takes a moment before she realises that that’s not what’s happening, and that he’s stopped moving his hips. She blinks at him, annoyed. “What’s the problem?”

He wrinkles his nose and bites his lip, “when you said you liked it rough, I thought...well. I thought you’d wanna top.” 

“Shit.” Shaw lets go of his hand, sits back on her heels. He’s still hard, but his face makes it clear his heart’s not in it. “You don’t switch?” 

“Not really.” He gently pushes her off him until she’s just next to him on the mattress, trying to figure out how things went from ‘about to get super laid’ to ‘apparently this isn’t gonna pan out’. 

Eliot sits up, reaches down for the dropped whisky bottle. “Sorry. I don’t usually get a read that wrong on people.” 

Shaw does switch sometimes, if that's what's on the table. But not tonight. Not if Eliot needs someone to fuck him up and hurt him, Shaw doesn’t have that in her tonight.  So she just grunts in response and holds out her hand for the whisky bottle. 

  
  



End file.
